Have you ever needed to adjust the level of dialogue relative to music or effects within a film or TV mix, but didn’t have access to the multi-track session? You might need to turn down a backing track, or simply raise the level of the dialogue without affecting the other sounds from the mix. ADX SVC (Speech Volume Control) automatically identifies and separates speech from background content, allowing you to control these elements independently.

Here’s how to adjust the speech and background elements in a mix using ADX SVC. Follow along step-by-step, or watch the video walkthrough:

SVC is compatible with these DAWs. Regardless of your DAW, the same simple steps apply.

STEP 1: Acquire the original mix

In this example, a woman is speaking while an instrumental string piece plays in the background. First load the clip into your DAW – in this example we’re using Reaper. Choose SVC from the track FX list and activate it. Then play through the audio clip. You can also use offline bounce if this is a feature in your DAW.

 

 

STEP 2: Set options

Choose the Pitch Range of the speech in your clip. In this case, we select the Female preset from the Speech Settings.

Then select Separation options to choose which algorithms are applied to the process. For this example we’ll only select AVAD (automatic voice activity detection) which will apply the processing only where speech is detected (as opposed to throughout the entire clip).

STEP 3: Separate
Press Separate and the audio is analyzed and the speech identified and separated from the wind noise.

STEP 4: Control

Turn down the background (in this case, the music) and/or turn up the speech to find your desired balance.

Have an idea for a future video tutorial? Let us know at support@audionamix.com.